By Alvin Cheng-Hin Lim

Colombia Rejects Peace Deal: Chinese Investments in Doubt?

The
Colombian people voted in early October 2016 to reject a peace agreement
negotiated by the government and the Marxist rebel group the Revolutionary
Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) to end their 52-year war. The national
referendum asked voters the following question: “Do you support the final
agreement to end the conflict and construct a stable and enduring peace?” 50.21
percent voted “No,” while the remaining 49.78 percent voted “Yes.” The margin
of difference was just 53,894 votes. The turnout was low, at just 37 percent of
the country’s 34 million eligible voters. The low turnout was reportedly due to
“extreme tropical rain, mostly in coastal departments where ‘yes’ won handily.”
However, the low turnout could also have been due, as we shall see, to unhappiness
among Colombian citizens stemming from their perceptions of injustice in the terms
of the peace agreement (Grandin, 2016; Cobb & Casey, 2016).

The
rejected peace agreement, which was the result of four years of negotiations
between the Colombian government and FARC representatives in Havana, Cuba, had
proposed “reforms aimed at bringing the rebels into the political system,
addressing drug trafficking through crop substitution and allowing for reduced
prison sentences for rebels who lay down their arms.” The agreement included “a
system of reparations for victims of the conflict” as well as a system of
“transitional justice” that would “allow combatants to avoid jail time in
exchange for full and honest participation in a truth and reconciliation
process” (Carasik, 2016; Duran, 2016; Cobb & Casey, 2016).

Senator
Álvaro Uribe, who was Colombia’s president from 2002 to 2010, led the
opposition to the peace agreement, successfully reframing the “vote that was
supposed to be on peace into a vote on the FARC.” Uribe, whose father had been
murdered during a botched kidnapping attempt by the FARC, argued that “the
agreement was too lenient on the rebels,” whom he suggested “should be
prosecuted as murderers and drug traffickers.” Uribe’s “No” campaign struck a
chord with the “many Colombians who had endured years of kidnappings and
killings by the rebels.” As one “No” voter complained about the agreement:
“It’s not fair for them not to go to prison without repentance … These
murderers should pay.”

In
short, the “No” campaign “wanted FARC commanders to get jail time for their
crimes, face prohibition from entering Congress and forfeit ill-gotten land and
money” (Duran, 2016; Grandin, 2016; Cobb & Casey, 2016; Forero & Vyas,
2016). Many of the “No” voters also strongly opposed political provisions in
the peace agreement that would have granted the FARC “nonvoting representation
in the legislature through 2018,” as well as the guarantee of “5 seats in the
106-member senate and 5 in the 166-member lower chamber over the next 2
election cycles” (Carasik, 2016). Senator Uribe and the “No” campaign warned
that “letting the FARC into congress risked turning Colombia into far-left
dystopia like neighboring Venezuela” (Forero & Vyas, 2016).

The
anger of the “No” voters stemmed from their traumatic experience of the extreme
violence of the FARC insurgency, which featured “massacres of civilians by the
rebels, paramilitaries and the state” (Duran, 2016). As Cobb and Casey (2016)
recount:

“The war left
brutal scars in Colombia. About 220,000 people were killed in the fighting, and
six million were displaced. An untold number of women were raped by fighters,
and children were given Kalashnikov rifles and forced into battle … In the end,
the war lasted so long that it might have been difficult for many Colombians to
forgive the FARC.”

The
involvement of the FARC in Colombia’s illegal narcotics industry also
contributed to the nation’s history of violence. The FARC have long admitted to
being involved in coca cultivation, the precursor to cocaine production, and
the government estimates that the group earns almost USD 1 billion per year
“from the production and sale of cocaine in Colombia.” Recent estimates of the
scale of coca cultivation in Colombia indicate an expansion to between 69,000
and 159,000 hectares in the country. The government has also accused the FARC
of trafficking cocaine overseas, including the United States and Europe,
accusations which the FARC has denied. Nonetheless, drug profits have become a
key source of revenue for the rebels, allowing the FARC “to buy weapons,
uniforms, and supplies and to recruit fresh troops.” However, drug wars “between
the FARC and illegal right-wing paramilitary groups over coca fields and drug
smuggling corridors has been a key factor in the conflict’s extreme levels of
violence, forced displacement and land grabs.” Experts have hence noted that
drug profits are “the fuel that feeds the conflict” (Otis, 2014, p. 2; Acosta,
2016; Murphy & Acosta, 2013).

Given
the numerous atrocities that were committed by all sides during the FARC
insurgency, Human Rights Watch (HRW) supported the “No” campaign. José Miguel
Vivanco, the director of HRW’s Americas division, warned that under the
agreement the “perpetrators — in the FARC and the military — of human-rights
violations would receive immunity” (Grandin, 2016). Kenneth Roth (2016), HRW’s
executive director, tweeted after the vote that: “Looks like Colombians aren’t
so eager to premise ‘peace’ on effective impunity for FARC’s and military’s war
crimes.”

The rejection of the peace
agreement raises questions of whether China, which is Colombia’s second-largest
trading partner, will want to increase its investments in the country.

Following
the rejection of the peace agreement, the leaders of the “No” campaign have
stated that “it was time to negotiate more stringent terms with the rebels,”
including “harsher punishments for FARC members, especially those who had
participated in the drug trade.” Rodrigo Londoño, the commander in chief of the
FARC, reiterated that the FARC are not interested in resuming war, and that the
referendum result showed that their “challenge as a political party is even
greater and requires more effort to build a stable and lasting peace.” The
government of Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos likewise reiterated that
it will not resume war, and government negotiators have returned to Havana to
discuss with their FARC counterparts how best to move forward. The Santos
government has also opened discussions with the opposition politicians who led
the “No” campaign.

In
the meantime, the demobilization timetable for the FARC rebels will no longer
be followed. If the peace agreement had won approval by the Colombian voters,
the rebels were to have left “their battle camps for 28 ‘concentration zones’
throughout the country, where over the next six months they would hand over
their weapons to United Nations teams.” The demobilization of the FARC and the
end of the insurgency now await fresh negotiations (Cobb & Casey, 2016).
However, experts warn that the FARC may simply abandon future negotiations
should the Uribe faction succeed in removing the government’s offers of amnesty
and political participation. As Professor Roddy Brett from Universidad del
Rosario points out, “Those conditions were utterly fundamental for the
negotiation and for the peace accords to be signed … You don’t lay down your
arms to go to prison” (Alpert, 2016).

The
rejection of the peace agreement raises questions of whether China, which is
Colombia’s second-largest trading partner, will want to increase its
investments in the country. Colombia is an attractive investment destination
given its prime geographic location in South America. As Jairo Muñoz (2016)
notes, “Colombia has port cities in the Pacific and can serve as a doorway to
the rest of South America; with proper infrastructure it can become a strategic
entry point for Chinese products and influence.” Indeed, Chinese Premier Li
Keqiang included Colombia in his inaugural tour of Latin America in May 2015,
during which he and President Santos “signed cooperation agreements in a range
of economic sectors including agriculture, finance, industrial manufacturing,
infrastructure, and science and technology,” and moved forward the process
towards the establishment of a Sino-Colombian Free Trade Agreement (Lim, 2015a).
Existing Chinese investment projects in Colombia include the construction of a USD
3 billion industrial park in the major port city of Buenaventura, which is
expected to generate 45,000 jobs when completed, as well as the construction of
road connecting the Orinoquia region with the coast, which will “make the Meta
River — along which the road will run — navigable so as to spur agricultural
development” (Gonzalez, 2015).

It
is true that Colombia presents security issues for foreign investors, including
the Chinese. As Ellis (2014) recounts:

“Chinese companies
operating in Colombia have faced significant problems from extortion and other
activities by criminal and terrorist groups. The best-known case was the June
2011 kidnapping of three Chinese, working for the oil sector subcontractor
Great Wall Drilling, which was supporting the operations of the Chinese-owned
company Emerald Energy in Caquetá … In Bogotá, Chinese employees of the
telecommunications Huawei were victims of an express kidnapping while eating
lunch in an affluent area just several blocks from their company’s Colombia
headquarters facility.”

However,
Chinese firms have a global reputation for having a significantly large risk
appetite, which can be seen in their willingness “to undertake megaprojects in
some of the world’s most dangerous regions,” including projects in Pakistan and
Somalia (Lim, 2015b). Even so, the additional costs of hiring private security
guards to protect their employees will have to be factored into these firms’
cost/benefit analyses of their investments in Colombia, and Colombia has
developed a reputation in China of being “a dangerous, if exotic land, with
more warnings about Colombia put out by the Chinese Ministry of Foreign
Commerce than for any other country in the region” (Ellis, 2014). The security
dividends which had been expected from the successful implementation of the
Colombian government’s peace agreement with the FARC, including the benefits
from the FARC’s divestment from the narcotics trade, would have gone far in
raising the profile of Colombia as a safe venue for foreign direct investment.
However, all that is now on hold pending the Colombian government’s negotiation
of a new peace agreement with the FARC.

Alpert,
M. (2016, October 3). There is no Plan B for the FAR deal. The Atlantic. Retrieved from
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/10/farc-colombia-uribe-santos-peace-referendum/502703/

Cobb,
J. S. and Casey, N. (2016, October 2). Colombia peace deal is defeated, leaving
a nation in shock. New York Times.
Retrieved from
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/03/world/colombia-peace-deal-defeat.html

Duran,
P. (2016, October 1). Colombians see vote as a means to secure peace, if not justice. New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/02/world/americas/colombians-see-vote-as-a-means-to-secure-peace-if-not-justice.html

Ellis,
E. (2014, October 27). New developments in China-Colombia engagement. The Manzella Report. Retrieved from
http://www.manzellareport.com/index.php/world/910-new-developments-in-china-colombia-engagement

Forero,
J., and Vyas, K. (2016, October 3). Former president who fought Colombia’s peace
deal holds key to its future. Wall Street
Journal. Retrieved from http://www.wsj.com/articles/former-president-who-fought-colombias-peace-deal-holds-key-to-its-future-1475522967

Muñoz,
J. (2016, September 13). Will China make the most of Colombia’s peace deal with
FARC? The Diplomat. Retrieved from
http://thediplomat.com/2016/09/will-china-make-the-most-of-colombias-peace-deal-with-farc/

About The Author

Alvin Cheng-Hin Lim is a research fellow with International Public Policy Pte. Ltd. (IPP), and is the author of Cambodia and the Politics of Aesthetics (Routledge 2013). He received his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Hawaii at Manoa, and has taught at Pannasastra University of Cambodia and the American University of Nigeria. Prior to joining IPP, he was a research fellow with the Longus Institute for Development and Strategy.